Grade 12 English Project 1 - Draft

ESCAPISM

INTRODUCTION

While reading the chapter “The Third Level” I was increasingly intrigued by the concept of escapism and how it was portrayed the situations depicted. Charlie exhibited signs of mental illness, like depression, and used escapism to enter the seemingly non-existent Third Level of the Grand Central Station, which was set before World War 1. Sam, his psychiatrist believed that due to Charlie’s discontent with his current life, he had hallucinated the third level, which gave him a way to escape and experience peace. This seemed very unusual to Charlie’s wife, who initially deemed his experience to be fantastical, but upon receiving Sam’s letter from the Third Level, she started believing in Charlie’s story.

This led me to wonder about how escapism applied to different people, and their tussles with it.

  

BODY

Escapism is a mental diversion from unpleasant or boring aspects of daily life, typically through activities involving imagination or entertainment. Escapism may be used to occupy oneself away from persistent feelings of depression or general sadness. Escapism is often perceived negatively in society. They usually take it as the inability to cope up with reality. But escapism can act as a double edged sword, it can range from extreme sloth to living a super healthy lifestyle to having an addiction to cheap pleasures. Escapism in a nutshell is nothing more than a means of providing an escape from our own consciousness by enhancing our sense of self and making us feel more alive.

The Man Who Lived Underground, a story about Fred Daniels who invents his own world beneath the city after being wrongfully convicted of killing a woman, explores the idea of escapism. He flees from the police, and when he grows weary of hiding, he thinks he must either turn himself in or find a hiding place. He then enters the sewer through the manholes in the roadway to get away from the police.

He finds a dirt cave off to the side as he makes his way through the water and the darkness. He then comes to a brick wall, through which he can hear a gathering of people singing. He exhausts himself after investigating the sewer and returns to the cave, where he passes out. He is hungry and cold when he awakens, yet he is aware that he should leave the sewers. He excavates holes in walls and enters basements to pass the time. He feels liberated and can do whatever he wants in the sewers. He moves from one basement to another, passing by a jewellery store, a furnace room, and an undertaker's office. He takes up whatever he feels like along the way.

He gets some tools from the office of the mortician, a lunchbox from the furnace room, some jewels and money from the jewellery store, an electric light, and a radio. Then he returns to the cave where he puts the electric light and radio he had collected from the basements, and decorates his wall with the money he took from the jewellery shop and sprinkles the floor with diamonds which look like "looking up into a sky full of restless stars". Because the items he has taken have little value to him, he does not see his actions as theft. He eventually tires of hiding and returns to the policeman to confess, but they ignore him and shoot him to death.

If we are not self-aware, we become the slaves of our escapism strategies. As long as our conscious mind intervenes to stop our overindulgence and prevent escapism from turning into a coping technique for self-deception, it can be helpful.

While we jump to another reality, our issues and stress continue to follow us there, driving us to seek another way out and trapping us in an endless cycle. Reflecting about oneself is crucial. Sometimes our focus on fleeing is so intense that we start giving ourselves false credit for finishing unimportant things. Instead of finishing a chapter before an exam, cleaning your gallery becomes a success. Deciding to take a nap even though a project is yet to be completed.

Funny, but true!

CONCLUSION

As depicted in the story above, we can see how escapism was severely different for Fred Daniels and Charlie, and to an extent, Sam. Fred used escapism to deal with the harsh social discrimination exhibited towards him, leading to a wrongful conviction for a heinous crime of murder. 

Charlie used escapism to get away from the impeding reality of World War 2, and the dismal after effects of World War 1. He dreamt quite literally of a way to escape his circumstances with his wife, and was unable to get back to the alternate reality created once he left it.

We can infer from this that escapism, while being extremely efficacious, can be fleeting and provide one momentary relief from real life circumstances.